


animus

by kvisan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Spoilers, it's only han/leia in the sense that han/leia is canon and this follows canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvisan/pseuds/kvisan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Force Awakens + dæmons. Snapshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	animus

**Author's Note:**

> Some background for those who don’t know or need a refresher: Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence and are capable of human speech. During childhood and early adolescence, dæmons shift between animal forms at will, and person’s dæmon usually settles on one form by adulthood.

Rey was fifteen when her dæmon found his form, a zerda. One of the merchants in Niima Outpost told Rey they were also called fennec foxes. He remained nameless, but they knew who they were. He was perfectly suited to life in the desert, his fur a few shades yellower than the orange sands, and Rey loved him. How could she not? They were alone, they had no one but each other.

Poe’s Philomela had never been anything but a bird. Ever since he could walk, Philomela could fly, and from her Poe learned to love it. No one was surprised when she took a Shaheen falcon as her form, matching Poe’s speed and agility in a starfighter. When Poe got BB-8, he fitted the little droid with a perch for Philomela. She barely fit into the cockpit of his plane with him, but they managed, and together they shared the fierce joy of flight.

Stormtroopers go through a secretive and arcane process during conditioning that internalizes their dæmons. FN-2817 thought he would never know his dæmon. Sometimes he dreamed of her, a flicker at the side of his vision, a soft voice in his ear, but he always awoke alone.

The moment when he decided he wouldn’t kill for the First Order, she was reborn, tucked into his chestplate, her small body shivering against him in fear and confusion. She was silent, but he felt her presence deeply, and he suspected later that it was her birth that Kylo Ren had sensed. He felt her shift between forms, first warm fur, then cool scales, then a flutter of feathers, and he pressed his hand against his chestplate in a vain attempt to soothe her.

The first time he heard her voice was when they both shouted, elated, when he made the shot at the Finalizer’s gun emplacement. Philomela and Poe shared a glance, and Poe spoke up about a name.

Philomela spoke too, but quietly, and FN-2187-- Finn-- heard his dæmon whisper back. And Philomela named her: Oya.

It was only after they crashed on Jakku and Finn shed his armor that he finally saw her clinging to his undershirt, her dark eyes blinking in the desert sun. She reached out a little clawed foreleg and grasped his finger, and they spoke each others’ names. He didn’t know what to call her current form, but they were finally together, and that was enough.

 

On Takodana, Maz Kanata and her dragonfly dæmon peered at Rey in the long, dusty hallway. Then she fixed her gaze on Rey’s little dæmon. “He’s less nameless than you think,” she said.

Finn flinched from FN-2199’s shout of “TRAITOR!!” and Oya, squirrel-formed and clinging to his shoulder, whispered encouragement in his ear.

Kylo Ren’s ship loomed in the sky, but the swarm of rebel x-wings on the horizon lit hope in Finn’s heart. The shriek of planes dogfighting overhead sounded like the screech of a hunting falcon, and Finn and Oya cheered as one of the x-wings took out three TIE fighters in a row. Chewbacca roared triumphantly, his eagle dæmon adding her voice as well.

In the forest, Rey and her dæmon fled from Kylo Ren. Just Kylo Ren. There was no sign of a dæmon, and that was _wrong_. Rey’s dæmon jumped into her arms when he cornered them, shaking, flinching from the lightsaber as much as from the grotesque _thing_ that wielded it. And then he waved his hand and they were plunged into darkness.

~~

General Leia’s dæmon Ríghan was a lioness, as her mother’s before her had been. It was said on Alderaan that someone with a dæmon of their same gender was gifted with foresight, but Leia never put much stock in those stories. When she met Luke, his raven dæmon Vilya was loudly complaining that she couldn’t breathe stuffed into his Stormtrooper disguise, and Ríghan leaned against her leg and rumbled, amused.

Han Solo’s dæmon was a coyote and her name was Leto. When he and Leia fought, which was often, Leto never seemed to have her heart in it. All she could ever do was stare at Ríghan while the lioness crouched and bared her teeth. Han sometimes tried to argue with Leto afterward, when he’d left again, but Leto never said anything about it except “We should have stayed.”

Their reunion was the same as it always was. Leia and Han exchanged terse words, but Ríghan always rubbed joyfully against Leto’s side, and Leto panted happily.

On the rebel base, Oya pushed off Finn’s shoulder for the first time and flew, a sparrow and then a condor and then a hawk. Finn tried to reach for her, but then BB-8 knocked his leg aside in its mad dash to the x-wing pilot, and he watched, dumbstruck, as she and Philomela fluttered circles around each other in midair. Poe threw his arms around Finn, and when Oya alighted on Finn’s (Poe’s? Finn’s.) jacket again, she whispered “I think we should stay here.”

~~

Starkiller Base was cold, and Rey's dæmon couldn't warm her. He woke just before she did, and Rey regained consciousness to the desperate sounds of his paws scrabbling against glass. Someone had put him in a little box, just far enough away to make them ache with separation.

And there was Kylo Ren, the masked, soulless monster. She spat the epithet at him, and he removed his mask.

He did have a dæmon, it turned out, but the feeling of utter wrongness didn't abate when she prowled around to where Rey could see her. Her hyena form was dark-furred and dark-eyed, but there was something else there, and Rey swore later that she saw the dæmon's shape flicker as she and Kylo Ren recoiled from Rey's words as she pushed back into his mind--they were afraid. And they fled.

The first thing Rey did when she got of the chair was smash open the glass barring her from her dæmon. She tucked him into her tunic again, feeling his sleek fur warm on her skin, and only then did she pick up the dropped blaster . "Who are we?" he whispered, and Rey would have shushed him if it had been any other question.

“We’re no one,” she said.

“Nemo,” he said. “No one. Nemo. That’s my name.”

~~

 

Kylo Ren murdered Han Solo, and as the light went out of Han’s eyes, Leto faded into nothingness.

 

Ríghan and Leia felt it. Only those closest to them noticed Leia’s hands white-knuckled in Ríghan’s neck ruff, her regal composure transparent for just a moment.

 

Chewbacca leveled the bowcaster with a scream that nearly tore his throat, the sights centered right between Kylo’s eyes, but his daemon knocked his arm hard and the shot went awry and hit Kylo in the stomach instead.

  
~~

When Ben was born, Leia looked into his little wrinkly red face and felt her heart spill over. All the times Han had walked out, all the times she’d screamed after him not to bother coming back, and all the times he came back anyway, it all seemed worth it to hold her son and see Han look at the little grunting bundle with the same love she felt. Ríghan and Leto crowded close, and there, curled next to Leia on the bed, was a little mouse pup that shifted quickly into a tiny kitten and then a baby bird.

“Malva,” said Leto, and Ríghan nodded.

**Author's Note:**

> “Nemo” means “no one” in Latin. 
> 
> “Philomela” literally means “lover of apples” in Ancient Greek but was mistranslated by Ovid as “lover of song” and I like that better.
> 
> Oya is the Yoruba orisha of rebirth. “Oya” literally translates to “she tore.” 
> 
> “Ríghan” means Queen, ancient Celtic. I chose it because of the Morrigan, celtic triple goddess of war.
> 
> “Leto” is the name of an ancient Greek goddess, the mother of Artemis and Apollo. I mostly chose it because I wanted her to have a name that reminded me of Lee Scoresby and Hester.
> 
> “Vilya” is an alternate spelling of “vilja” which means “will” in Swedish. 
> 
> “Malva” is the Latin taxonomy for mallow. Some random English philosopher (Lord Monboddo- i swear that’s a real person) from the 1770s claims that “the ancients” planted malva on their graves as food for the dead in the afterlife.


End file.
